Apple's anticipated full-fledged television set could offer Internet-based content subscriptions with customized channel lineups, if the company has its way.

Customized programming is said to be one of Apple's most desired features for its rumored television set, according to analyst Shaw Wu with Sterne Agee. In Apple's vision, customers would choose whichever channels or shows they want for a monthly subscription fee.

"This is obviously much more complicated (than current offerings) from a licensing standpoint," Wu wrote in a note to investors on Wednesday. "And in our view, would change the game for television and give AAPL a big leg-up against the competition."

Hardware and technology are not the issues holding back Apple from releasing a television set, he said. Instead, Apple must negotiate unique content deals that will allow the company to differentiate its product from other televisions on the market.

"Today, iTunes has a rich library of movies and TV shows but it is mostly for downloads and only movies are available for rentals (TV shows once were but were terminated in August 2011)," he wrote. "What's missing is live broadcast television."

He said the obvious way Apple could allow this is to integrate with a cable or satellite subscription already offered to customers. But the more revolutionary way would be to deliver live content via the Internet or IPTV, a method that would be more in line with the company's existing iTunes and iCloud services.

Apple's interest in expanding its content offerings has been known for some time, as the company is said to have pushed for more options and greater flexibility in negotiations with content providers. In November, CBS Chief Executive Les Moonves revealed his company was approached by Apple about a potential streaming TV deal that would share ad revenues, but the network declined Apple's offer because it prefers licensing its content.

Wu previously noted in October that Apple's plans to build an HDTV have been held up by content providers who are reluctant to allow Apple to offer subscription-based plans to customers. Rumors of an Apple-built HDTV began to pick up steam earlier this year, when it was revealed that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs told his biographer that he had "cracked' the secret to building an integrated, easy-to-use television set. He said the device "will have the simplest user interface you could imagine."

If Apple does release a full television set, Wu believes it would be wise for the company to continue selling its existing Apple TV set top box. This would allow Apple to continue offering existing HDTV owners the benefits of Apple TV, while an integrated TV set could offer a complete easy-to-use solution like a Mac, iPad or iPhone.

Rumors have pointed toward a 2012 launch of an Apple television with Siri voice control technology built in, and the company is said to have already built prototypes of the anticipated device. The latest rumor this week suggested suppliers will begin preparing materials for an Apple-branded television in the first quarter of 2012, with the device debuting in the second or third quarter of the year.

"This is obviously much more complicated (than current offerings) from a licensing standpoint," Wu wrote in a note to investors on Wednesday. "This is obviously much more complicated from a licensing standpoint...

I hope this isn't totally true although I can see the fun of your own selections for a lot of shows. I have loved discovering new stuff (as in old stuff I never saw) on Netflix and now would hate to lose the 'pay one fee for a limitless set of choices' option on this older stuff - I give 'Burn Notice' as an example of a show I like I never knew existed till I discovered it on Netflix . Actually Netflix suggested I may enjoy it!. I can see that new content may have to cost more but for everything over say a year old the Netflix model is hard to beat IMHO. So a mix of two selections would be cool, a level one selection of new stuff and a limitless selection of old stuff. In truth I'd probably just go for option 2 if it were possible and saved money. New stuff is over rated and it is available a year later

Meanwhile I have to suspect Siri is listening on a hand held device, I don't see how she'd hear me with the volume way up from the TV itself. Oh ... unless the Apple TVs have cameras and she can lip read!

From Apple ][ - to new Mac Pro I've owned them all.Long on AAPL so biased"Google doesn't sell you anything, Google just sells you!"

It sounds great, but I haven't heard anything yet that would allow me to dump my cable provider (Comcrap, which I'd sorely love to do.) I'd still have to use them for broadband Internet.

What's more, there's a 250GB traffic limit on customers. That limit could easily be broached if you add hours of streaming HDTV daily on top of the the amount of traffic that gets used for other activities (surfing, upload/download of software files, email with attachments, Skype, etc.)

I'd really hate to have to pay Comcrap MORE money if I dumped the cable portion of my services. And even if they raised the cap, I'd expect them to also raise the price of Inter to reclaim their loss of cable revenue and/or throttle back connection speeds (because that's the kind if company they are.)

I also seriously wonder if their network can handle thousands or millions of simultaneous streaming Internet connections.

Please please please let this be true. I have wanted this since the first time I signed up for cable/satellite. If I could pay a price, even a freaking $1 per channel I would. I cut the chord just over a year ago and I love it, but I miss some of my old shows that Netflix hasn't picked up on yet. If I could have antenna plus a few channels like History, FX, Comedy Central, HGTV (for the wife), DIY, and some kid channels...I'd be in heaven.

It sounds great, but I haven't heard anything yet that would allow me to dump my cable provider (Comcrap, which I'd sorely love to do.) I'd still have to use them for broadband Internet.

What's more, there's a 250GB traffic limit on customers. That limit could easily be broached if you add hours of streaming HDTV daily on top of the the amount of traffic that gets used for other activities (surfing, upload/download of software files, email with attachments, Skype, etc.)

I'd really hate to have to pay Comcrap MORE money if I dumped the cable portion of my services. And even if they raised the cap, I'd expect them to also raise the price of Inter to reclaim their loss of cable revenue (because that's the kind if company they are.)

Can you get Fios or Uverse? I have Fios and love it. I pay a lot more than I used to with AT&T broadband, but it is tons faster and reliable and I use it now to stream movies/netflix/hulu/etc and have yet to get any warnings.

Can you get Fios or Uverse? I have Fios and love it. I pay a lot more than I used to with AT&T broadband, but it is tons faster and reliable and I use it now to stream movies/netflix/hulu/etc and have yet to get any warnings.

It sounds great, but I haven't heard anything yet that would allow me to dump my cable provider (Comcrap, which I'd sorely love to do.) I'd still have to use them for broadband Internet.

What's more, there's a 250GB traffic limit on customers. That limit could easily be broached if you add hours of streaming HDTV daily on top of the the amount of traffic that gets used for other activities (surfing, upload/download of software files, email with attachments, Skype, etc.)

I'd really hate to have to pay Comcrap MORE money if I dumped the cable portion of my services. And even if they raised the cap, I'd expect them to also raise the price of Inter to reclaim their loss of cable revenue (because that's the kind if company they are.)

I dumped FiOS TV and land phone line but keep their FiOS internet as NetFlix + iTunes is fine for us. I thought I'd save money but I suspect they charge me as much for just internet as the FiOS with TV and Internet! PLus I can't access stuff like CNN using CNN's App without a FiOS TV account so my plan kind of went wrong ...

From Apple ][ - to new Mac Pro I've owned them all.Long on AAPL so biased"Google doesn't sell you anything, Google just sells you!"

I give 'Burn Notice' as an example of a show I like I never knew existed till I discovered it on Netflix . Actually Netflix suggested I may enjoy it!.

Eesh... Netflix told me I'd like Burn Notice as well... I watched a handful of episodes, and couldn't watch anymore. I thought it was a terrible show. Way too formulaic for me -- same story every episode with a few variations.

If Apple does release a full television set, Wu believes it would be wise for the company to continue selling its existing Apple TV set top box. This would allow Apple to continue offering existing HDTV owners the benefits of Apple TV, while an integrated TV set could offer a complete easy-to-use solution like a Mac, iPad or iPhone.

Too bad Apple isn't willing to think this way regarding a mid range desktop computer. Instead of being able to use the monitor we already have we have to buy an iMac with a built in screen.

But if Apple is able to offer custom channel packages it would be a godsend. I hate having to take channels I will never watch in order to get the ones I want. I don't know Spanish. I will never learn Spanish. I do not want Spanish channels.

I have been thinking about the Apple TV. This is what I reckon we are going to see:

The problem with TV now is that all the various services that people use arrive as wires in the back of the TV. It is awkward to switch sources. It's not possible to browse channels visually. The more content you buy, the more remote controls and boxes you accumulate.

Apple can solve this mess by moving the point of convergence from the back of the TV to an Apple data centre. The centre acts as a building-sized TiVo. It takes in all the channels, records them and then delivers them on to the consumer's TV via the internet.

The end-user buys a TV with an internet connection pointing at a customised service streamed from Apple's data centre.

A user wanting to subscribe to a cable network would just click on buy to subscribe to the service. Apple shares revenue with the provider (with a 30:70 revenue split). The service provider has nothing to do. They accept this revenue split because Apple users don't need dishes, recorders, installation engineers, cable cards or any of that crap.

The user sees ALL their paid content in a screen with live previews of all channels. Every channel is being recorded. To access all this content you only need one interface and one remote. You can access it on an iPad too.

Eesh... Netflix told me I'd like Burn Notice as well... I watched a handful of episodes, and couldn't watch anymore. I thought it was a terrible show. Way too formulaic for me -- same story every episode with a few variations.

Sounds just like House. Same formula each show......sick patient, try a few fixes, last one is discovered by House thinking about something someone said or got the clue by staring at something.

Meanwhile I have to suspect Siri is listening on a hand held device, I don't see how she'd hear me with the volume way up from the TV itself. Oh ... unless the Apple TVs have cameras and she can lip read!

This is actually fairly trivial to implement these days. The TV knows exactly what sound is coming from its speakers- Therefore, it can, in effect, "cancel" that sound out (at any volume) and listen for anything *besides* that sound. Noise cancelling headphones are a good example of this sort of technology- just applied in a different manner.

Of course, the acoustics of any given room and the use of a seperate sound system can add complexity to this, however, this too can be accounted for through a quick calibration.

It sounds great, but I haven't heard anything yet that would allow me to dump my cable provider (Comcrap, which I'd sorely love to do.) I'd still have to use them for broadband Internet.

What's more, there's a 250GB traffic limit on customers. That limit could easily be broached if you add hours of streaming HDTV daily on top of the the amount of traffic that gets used for other activities (surfing, upload/download of software files, email with attachments, Skype, etc.)

That's still 250 hours of 720p video. If your household really watches that much, then you're probably best off with cable. Apple's solutions so far serve the light watchers better than heavy users.

Quote:

I'd really hate to have to pay Comcrap MORE money if I dumped the cable portion of my services. And even if they raised the cap, I'd expect them to also raise the price of Inter to reclaim their loss of cable revenue and/or throttle back connection speeds (because that's the kind if company they are.)

That's an unfortunate down side to having your entertainment distribution also being your provider.

Quote:

I also seriously wonder if their network can handle thousands or millions of simultaneous streaming Internet connections.

It's a concern, but I don't think it will be that big of a deal. That was one of the upside to linear programming, the same feed goes to millions of houses, rather than each house streaming a program, one feed vs. a million outgoing streams.

Eesh... Netflix told me I'd like Burn Notice as well... I watched a handful of episodes, and couldn't watch anymore. I thought it was a terrible show. Way too formulaic for me -- same story every episode with a few variations.

I know but it's perfect to watch while eating ...

From Apple ][ - to new Mac Pro I've owned them all.Long on AAPL so biased"Google doesn't sell you anything, Google just sells you!"

This is actually fairly trivial to implement these days. The TV knows exactly what sound is coming from its speakers- Therefore, it can, in effect, "cancel" that sound out (at any volume) and listen for anything *besides* that sound. Noise cancelling headphones are a good example of this sort of technology- just applied in a different manner.

Of course, the acoustics of any given room and the use of a seperate sound system can add complexity to this, however, this too can be accounted for through a quick calibration.

Good point I didn't think of that but wow, noise cancellation at that level ... that is getting pretty sic-fi ...

From Apple ][ - to new Mac Pro I've owned them all.Long on AAPL so biased"Google doesn't sell you anything, Google just sells you!"

Eesh... Netflix told me I'd like Burn Notice as well... I watched a handful of episodes, and couldn't watch anymore. I thought it was a terrible show. Way too formulaic for me -- same story every episode with a few variations.

You're in the minority. Burn Notice has evolved away from the save mysterious client in every episode.

I have been thinking about the Apple TV. This is what I reckon we are going to see:

The problem with TV now is that all the various services that people use arrive as wires in the back of the TV. It is awkward to switch sources. It's not possible to browse channels visually. The more content you buy, the more remote controls and boxes you accumulate.

Apple can solve this mess by moving the point of convergence from the back of the TV to an Apple data centre. The centre acts as a building-sized TiVo. It takes in all the channels, records them and then delivers them on to the consumer's TV via the internet.

The end-user buys a TV with an internet connection pointing at a customised service streamed from Apple's data centre.

A user wanting to subscribe to a cable network would just click on buy to subscribe to the service. Apple shares revenue with the provider (with a 30:70 revenue split). The service provider has nothing to do. They accept this revenue split because Apple users don't need dishes, recorders, installation engineers, cable cards or any of that crap.

The user sees ALL their paid content in a screen with live previews of all channels. Every channel is being recorded. To access all this content you only need one interface and one remote. You can access it on an iPad too.

1st - We can already choose our channels "a la carte" where I lived (which is montreal)
2nd - Never forgets Tel co and Cable co are the ones controlling the "pipe" into your home. If Apple leaves them out of the loop they will charge insane fees for your internet connection.
3rd - I have IPTV with Bell in Montreal. There line capacity at my house is 50 mbps. They only allow internet up to 20 mbps, reserving 30 mbps for the TV feed.

The amount of bandwight needed for a internet only TV system would be INSANE. IPTV REQUIRES participation of the "pipe" providers, its not possible if you stream content from the net all the time. And IPTV is a complex system that requires fiber optic lines into nodes close to the distribution sites. IPTV does NOT mean streaming video feed from the net. In a IPTV system, TV feeds are stream from servers that are close to your home and those servers received broadcast feeds. If customers would stream from a central point, the network would collapse under the load.

Please please please let this be true. I have wanted this since the first time I signed up for cable/satellite. If I could pay a price, even a freaking $1 per channel I would. I cut the chord just over a year ago and I love it, but I miss some of my old shows that Netflix hasn't picked up on yet. If I could have antenna plus a few channels like History, FX, Comedy Central, HGTV (for the wife), DIY, and some kid channels...I'd be in heaven.

i cut the cord a few years ago. The only issue I have is watching nfl or college BBall. Otherwise.......fsck-em

Apple can solve this mess by moving the point of convergence from the back of the TV to an Apple data centre. The centre acts as a building-sized TiVo. It takes in all the channels, records them and then delivers them on to the consumer's TV via the internet..

Or they could stick with what they are doing but at a lower price/higher quality/both and not care about the cable companies anymore than they have already. Deal directly with the content providers and such.

Which for some is even better since why should you have to pay $20 a month all year for a station you only watch 1 show from. Why not just get the one show for one month's service fee or just a tad more or less.

Maybe even a release of the TVs with partial agreements in place, but the more popular the sets become, the more difficult getting the remaining agreements will become.

If the reason for not wanting to sign an agreement is a fear that it won't pay off then the more popular the sets become the easier the agreement will be to secure. Because Apple will have a confirmed audience to put before them.

That is if the agreement only works on this fabled TV. Which is unlikely. Whatever they do is more likely to be device independent so they would have the collected Apple TV users, iPad, computers etc to work with.

Or they could stick with what they are doing but at a lower price/higher quality/both and not care about the cable companies anymore than they have already. Deal directly with the content providers and such.

Which for some is even better since why should you have to pay $20 a month all year for a station you only watch 1 show from. Why not just get the one show for one month's service fee or just a tad more or less.

The content provider could sell through AppleTV whatever packages they want. Just like music vendors who have the choice to sell whole albums or singles on iTunes.

I think the market will quickly inform vendors the best ways to publish content on this new platform.

It sounds great, but I haven't heard anything yet that would allow me to dump my cable provider (Comcrap, which I'd sorely love to do.) I'd still have to use them for broadband Internet.

What's more, there's a 250GB traffic limit on customers. That limit could easily be broached if you add hours of streaming HDTV daily on top of the the amount of traffic that gets used for other activities (surfing, upload/download of software files, email with attachments, Skype, etc.)

I'd really hate to have to pay Comcrap MORE money if I dumped the cable portion of my services. And even if they raised the cap, I'd expect them to also raise the price of Inter to reclaim their loss of cable revenue and/or throttle back connection speeds (because that's the kind if company they are.)

I also seriously wonder if their network can handle thousands or millions of simultaneous streaming Internet connections.

I agree completely. I don't want to waste my bandwidth watching TV shows. That's rediculous. I would top out my monthly limit in a few days. I find it difficult enough just watching streaming videos from YouTube.....

As its been said many times before, it's the content that's the thing. You can have the best interface in the world, but if you don't have content..... Jeez, here in Canada we can't even listen to Pandora, or even watch American commercials. How the hell are they going to negotiate national cultural regulations times 150 countries???

I just can't see how an Apple TV will work, without it just being a fancy pants monitor. No, I don't want just a glorified version on iTunes either. That's a non-starter.

It's true that Internet providers would make some money still because whatever Apple does it will require and Internet connection to work. But even so, if Apple's fee is manageable, I think we can all still end up paying less. If, for example, you pay $70 a month for cable and instead Apple charges $30 for what you need, I doubt additional charges for using up more bandwidth would allow cable operators to tack on $40 to your bill. If there is an additional $20, for example, the consumer can still come out ahead. There would also be an advantage to eliminating a set-top box from the equation. HD PVRs are still relatively costly.

Service providers, in this model, still make lots of money and we might end up paying less. Win/Win all around. Of course it would take about five years for the process to work its way through and it would be painful at first but over the long haul, this could go rather well. Remember, too, that even those who do not wish to buy into the Apple model will benefit because cable operators are going to be forced into changing their model to compete with Apple's. A good thing all around if Apple does well.

Do we not recall how difficult it was for Apple to get any movie and television studios on board after the AppleTV was demoed? Do we not remember NBC pulling out of iTunes Store for a year or so? Are we not seeing how they are still not wanting to give Apple any play by only allowing content to be bought (and sometimes rented) at high prices? So what exactly does Apple have to offer that will not negatively affect the networks solid, guaranteed deals with their local affiliates and distributors?

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Originally Posted by digitalclips

Come on guys ... what TV show isn't formulaic? You either like it or you don't. 13 makes House watchable

If I didn't watch a TV show because it had an opening middle and conclusion then I wouldn't be watching any TV dramas.

Over the decades TV has gotten considerably better. The writers keep the show consistent and can plan for season or series long arcs that make for a more rounded viewing experience.

This bot has been removed from circulation due to a malfunctioning morality chip.

Please please please let this be true. I have wanted this since the first time I signed up for cable/satellite. If I could pay a price, even a freaking $1 per channel I would. I cut the chord just over a year ago and I love it, but I miss some of my old shows that Netflix hasn't picked up on yet. If I could have antenna plus a few channels like History, FX, Comedy Central, HGTV (for the wife), DIY, and some kid channels...I'd be in heaven.

I concur. I dumped cable for the simple fact that it was expensive, and I hated paying for channels I never watched.

The number one thing that has to happen for ANY type of Internet based TV, is for all customers to be connected via fiber-optics. That is a minimum. And that is years and years away. That will cost billions for the infrastructure to be put into place.

Then I can see Apple making deals with cable companies, or even their own data center. When I downloaded Lion, it took one and a half hours! How long would it take before the content I wanted to watch was even ready for me? 10 minutes, twenty before enough of a buffer existed to make it worth my while to watch?

It will be interesting to see how (if) Apple can make it work, but, realistically, the Internet just isn't ready for the type of service that really needs to be available to make this thing fly.....

The number one thing that has to happen for ANY type of Internet based TV, is for all customers to be connected via fiber-optics. That is a minimum. And that is years and years away. That will cost billions for the infrastructure to be put into place.

I'd imagine Apple's initial solution would be flexible in terms of the bandwidth it requires. They could dynamically throttle the bandwidth based on what the receiving device reported back.

8mbit ADSL is fast enough for a single HD channel.
Fibre to the cabinet technology is certainly fast enough for multiple HD streams.

For the service to be valuable - it does not have to be available to every consumer.

Apple can solve this mess by moving the point of convergence from the back of the TV to an Apple data centre. The centre acts as a building-sized TiVo. It takes in all the channels, records them and then delivers them on to the consumer's TV via the internet.

That would be a nice concept if it woud be possible to implement. To do this Apple would need to build data centers in each city and send only SD feeds. Netflix, which is a single feed stream is already choking the internet. Forget about feeding multiple HD feeds to large quantities of household, its just not possbile.

Please please please let this be true. I have wanted this since the first time I signed up for cable/satellite. If I could pay a price, even a freaking $1 per channel I would. I cut the chord just over a year ago and I love it, but I miss some of my old shows that Netflix hasn't picked up on yet. If I could have antenna plus a few channels like History, FX, Comedy Central, HGTV (for the wife), DIY, and some kid channels...I'd be in heaven.

$1 per channel per month? I don't see that happening. Remember, you're going for Ã* la carte pricing which means you pay a premium. Lets say right now your cable company has 100,000 customers all subscribing for a particular base channel station. Now you want to pay $1/month for it but it's an unpopular channel and only 5,000 (5%) want to subscribe to it. That means they are only getting $5/month from the cable company. The station was also getting hefty advertisement payments but now that the subscriber rate has dropped advertisers have dropped out completely. The station has gone under because the environment that made it work is no longer supporting it. You've now lost a channel.

I bet people watch plenty of channels and don't realize how much they watch them or that a particular show is on a channel. Can an Ã* la carte method sustain the future of television networks or will umbrella companies have to consolidate shows differently in order to make a buck? Will we see CBS split NCIS an NCIS: LA Â two shows with high ratings Â to different channels to maximize the number of stations you rent per month? Will they even go so far as to move a popular show across multiple channels week to week to maximize their return?

What people are wanting is to destroy something that will make it more expensive for customers unless you watch very little TV. Only those that want some select show or two on some cable network could possibly benefit from getting rid of the cable TV model.

Then you have consider how this will affect your cable interest costs. If your cable company loses 1/2 of it 100,000 TV paying customers they still have to pay all the networks the same amount of money. So do they double the costs of their loyal TV viewing customers? Not without losing more TV viewing customers that way. They have to jack the prices on your internet service, they now throttle users speeds, they now put in upper level caps. You're also using more internet than before because that is where your content is coming from. Can you blame them for trying to protect their business? I can't.

This bot has been removed from circulation due to a malfunctioning morality chip.

I'd imagine Apple's initial solution would be flexible in terms of the bandwidth it requires. They could dynamically throttle the bandwidth based on what the receiving device reported back.

8mbit ADSL is fast enough for a single HD channel.
Fibre to the cabinet technology is certainly fast enough for multiple HD streams.

For the service to be valuable - it does not have to be available to every consumer.

C.

Seriously people here need to grap the basic concept of IPTV. google it or something. I have it, I know how it works and I am telling you its impossible to implenment a netflix style system for TV. Bell fibe offers it in canada and I think AT&T has the same system in the US. Go get see how it works or something.

It sounds great, but I haven't heard anything yet that would allow me to dump my cable provider (Comcrap, which I'd sorely love to do.) I'd still have to use them for broadband Internet.

For better or worse, Comcast is in position to essentially clear whatever content deal Apple puts together if Apple wants it to be comprehensive.

Comcast is the default cable provider is numerous markets. Comcast owns or controls NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, NBC Sports (Versus until January 2012), USA, SciFi and Bravo, owns the rights to most of the shows that air on all of those networks, and owns the rights to a huge TV catalog.

And Comcast owns one of the major film studios and a huge film catalog.

Disney, Fox, WB, and Paramount will all come along when it gets time to make a deal. If there is a potential holdout that Apple would go forward without, it's probably CBS.